Top 5 Challenges to Upgrading to SQL Server 2016

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Top 5 Challenges to Moving to SQL Server 2016And how to overcome them


Everyone Wants to Move to Modern SQL

• Scale out for more capacity• Auto failover with AlwaysOn• Enhanced security with Always Encrypted• Comprehensive BI capabilities• Fast In-Memory technology• Accelerated hybrid cloud scenarios• PolyBase technology for structured and unstructured data


But Upgrading is Tough

• Application impact• Operational issues• Cost implications


Challenge 1: Load Balancing and Read/Write Split

• AlwaysOn advantages:– Secondary servers not idle; read traffic

– Improved hardware utilization

– More traffic; faster responses

• AlwaysOn challenges: – Requires specific application changes

– Random, inconsistent load sharing; not true balancing

– Time consuming, expensive appdev work required

– No access with off-the-shelf apps


Challenge 2: Replication-aware Load Balancing

• Constant challenges of moving data between primary and secondary servers:– Replication rates

– Agreed-upon tolerance threshold

– Data accuracy

– Modify applications


Challenge 3: Core-based Licensing Costs

• SQL's licensing model proves change isn't cheap– Per-core fees

– More cores per socket

– More licenses per processor

– Secondary servers need licenses, too


Challenge 4: Lack of Visibility and Control at a Cluster Level

• Multi-server structures require easy, accurate diagnostics – but how?– No real-time insight

– No comprehensive view

– Mediocre analytics


Challenge 5: Downtime and Failover

• Critical components won't failover beyond one data center• Advantage of multiple environments is lost

– Virtual Network Name (VNN, or Active Group Listener) itself can failover only within a single data center


Enter Database Load Balancing

It works at the SQL networking layerand offers simple ways to take advantage of AlwaysOn without the hassles that usually come with it.


Load Balancing and Read/Write Split

• Secondary Servers are Powerful!Use them to empower read/write split– No need to modify applications with

read-intent strings

– ScaleArc’s software automatically directs reads and writes appropriately

– Enables fast throughput


Replication-aware Load Balancing

• Understand replication status– Monitors replication lag

– Avoids sending traffic to a node that has fallen behind your defined threshold for delay

– Never serve stale data again!


Maximize Asset Utilization for Better Cost Efficiency

• Leverage all deployed servers with no app changes– No more idle secondaries

• Use app-transparent caching to reduce database load


Better Visibility and Control in Multi-Server Environs

• Database load balancing software delivers real-time views into queries, providing actionable insights in real time


A Better Failover Strategy

• Database load balancing software handles failovers effectively in one data center, across multiple locations, or to the cloud– Queues writes once a failover has begun

– Automatically drains the queue once the secondary server is operating as the new primary

– Routes read queries to other secondary servers for higher availability and continuity of service

– Avoids application errors during failover, making the “outage” invisible to users


The Numbers Don’t Lie

Customers results using ScaleArc + modern database:

• $188K in savings, in just three minutes – from avoiding application downtime during database failover

• $2M in increased revenue, every year – from avoiding downtime from maintenance windows

• $3M in increased revenue, every year – from doubling website performance

• $320K in savings – from avoiding dev time recoding for database scaling

• 2x faster app rollout – from dev time avoided


Overcoming the Top 5 Challenges to Moving to SQL Server 2016

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http://www.scalearc.com/wplp-top-5-challenges-upgrading-sql-server

Top 5 Challenges to Upgrading to SQL Server 2016

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